Seven Figure Consultant with Jessica Fearnley

Everyone would benefit from having a business coach.

You should have a business coach all the time.

You should choose a coach with the opposite personality type to your own.

These are just a few myths around business coaching that I get asked about.

In this week's podcast I'm addressing these, and exploring how you can decide whether a business coach is right for you, including:

• The empowerment that comes from a business coaching relationship
• The role your coach should never play
• What makes someone uncoachable?
• Do you need a coach at all times?
• When your coach should become your business partner
• The impact personality can have on your coaching relationship
• The 4 questions you should ask yourself before hiring a new business coach.

How confident are you about spending money in your consulting business?

What metric do you use to decide if an investment in your business is affordable or not?

There is so much material available online on how to market your business, get more clients, generate more income. We tend to be more comfortable asking for and receiving help in these areas.

But as turning a profit is the goal of our business, and that depends on income and expenses, it's equally as important to talk about outgoings, and how to make good spending decisions.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the same topic come up a few times in conversations over LinkedIn messenger - how do we know what we can afford when it comes to investing in your business?

In this week's podcast I'm looking at how to make successful spending decisions in your business, including:

• How to know if you should buy a particular course, programme, or other big ticket item
• How to know if you are investing the right amount in professional and personal development
• What to do when a course or programme doesn't bring you results you'd hoped for
• Four questions to ask yourself now so you're prepared to make your next spending decision

Useful Links:

• Podcast Episode 12 - Risk, Caution and Growing Your Business
• Podcast Episode 20 - Helping Your Business Bounce Back After A Crisis

Often as consultants, we know that we're really good at what we do, we are the expert in our field, but it can be really difficult to be confident in the way that we present ourselves. We want our appearance to affirm that we are who we say we are, and we can do the things that we say we can do.

In this week's podcast, I interviewed Tracy Hooper, a personal stylist who helps professional women create a style that helps them stand out, look great and make an impact.

We talked about the impact personal styling can have on our confidence and performance as consultants, including:

• How a stylist will work with you to create an authentic look that reflects who you are (they're not going to hijack your appearance)
• The role your clothing plays in building relationships, and the problems with going too bold, or too corporate
• The different ways you can create your own signature look, including examples of people getting this right
• What you should avoid wearing on Zoom calls
• How Tracy works with her clients to build a wardrobe that works for them, building many outfits from a handful of garments

Useful links:

Tracy Hooper on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyjaynehooper/

Tracy's website: https://tracyjaynehooper.com

Clothe Yourself In Confidence guide to using colours to influence the messages your appearance is giving out: https://tracyjaynehooper.com/clothe-confidence-1/

The world has been a heavy place to be.

Social media has been… A lot. We've had months of coronavirus and lockdown, and protests and riots triggered by the George Floyd tragedy, and flare ups and backlashes, and amazing conversations and eyes being opened to the endemic problem of racism… But there's been such a lot of activity in such a short space of time. The emotional weight to nearly everything has been so much heavier than we would normally expect.

And it all takes its toll. Doesn't it.

So now feels like the perfect moment to be talking about this.

How do you re-energise in a hard phase of your business?

However your business is going at the moment, and I know we have the full spectrum in our audience right now – there are some of you who are really busy and feeling that lockdown 'boom' of demand for your services. There are some who maybe have seen a little bit of a lull, and others who feel like they're stuck on pause with very little work going on and very little money coming in.

However your business is going – there is a huge amount to contend with behind the scenes emotionally.

In this episode I discuss:

• Identifying what you want 'normal' to look like from now on
• Choosing what you want to keep from the lockdown experience
• 5 things you can start doing right now to recharge yourself ready for the next phase.

On 17th June, in my mentoring group, the Work Less Earn More Mentorship, I'm hosting our monthly masterclass, which is called 'Designing a Work Schedule that Works for you post-lockdown'. If you'd like to join us live (or catch-up on the replay) you can find out more about the Mentorship here.

As the UK makes a tentative return to work and school, we're starting to wonder what the next phase looks like for our businesses.

In this episode I'm looking at the transition into the next phase of working, especially if you're accustomed to working in close proximity to your client, working in their office, travelling to meet them in person, or delivering events in person. This is a huge thing for a lot of consultants, especially in the HR space, but also health and wellbeing and some of those connected services.

In this episode I explore:

• Why business consultants are especially well equipped to handle this new never-experienced-before phase of working life.
• The surprising early feedback I've received to my survey of independent consultants.
• Four essential questions you ask yourself to prepare for a successful transition to this new phase of socially distant / remote working.

Bring a notepad and pen - you'll want to write these questions down so you can journal on them later, and unlock a whole raft of possibilities and opportunities.

Here's the survey mentioned in the episode - I would love your input on your experience of running a consulting business now (no matter how new or established, or what your current revenue is) - your answers will help me shape my future podcasts, newsletters and offers.

When lockdown first began back in March it felt in a lot of ways that life just hit pause. And certainly for me, that felt traumatic. It was the weight of it all, the unknowns and the fear of what this terrible disease would do to us as a population.

As we move into a phase of easing the lockdown restrictions, I'm feeling a bit of a return to that brain-fuzz trauma uncertain place.

So in this week's podcast I'm talking about how we can see past this new phase of uncertainty, and start working towards a more secure future for your consulting businesses, including:

• The #1 mindset trap consultants need to avoid
• What to do when a client says 'yes after lockdown'
• Why this recession is different from any other - and how we can respond differently to it
• How the media narrative could be hurting your consulting business - and what you can do about that.

Often when I start working with clients they have a good handle on what tasks they need to do to run their consulting business, and how much money they make month on month.

But what they don't see is which activities are generating the most value.

So often in business we can form a real attachment to certain marketing activities, or particular programmes or groups, or even an individual client or company.

We can find ourselves putting so much of our time and energy into one area, and in most cases, if someone asked you – 'why are you investing so much resource into this one corner of your business' you would almost feel like, isn't it obvious?? This is the centrepiece of my whole business.

BUT.

In many, many cases – our instincts can lead us astray here.

In this week's podcast I explore:

• What happened when I split my focus across too many activities.
• Why your feelings aren't helpful when assessing what's working, and what you should be using instead.
• The highest value activity consultants should prioritise when generating new leads.
• How a single line on a spreadsheet transformed my coaching client's consulting business.

If you feel like you can't quite get to grips with why your consulting business isn't bringing in the money it should, or you can't seem to extricate yourself from your gruelling work schedule, or you've got both problems at the same time - we can make huge progress in just a single strategy session, for an investment of £499 or $629.

We spend 90 minutes looking at your business in detail and use that to create an action plan for how to maximise the value of the work you are doing and minimise the effort you have to put in to get that work done.

It's working less and earning more in action – and it changes businesses.

Get in touch to discuss if this is a good option for you and your consulting business.

Is your consulting business thriving during the Covid crisis?

We have all these tragic news stories coming at us all day every day.

I know women who have felt the impact of the virus first hand – either because they've been ill themselves or they've suffered a tragic loss in their family.

And I also know many businesses are struggling, or are simply on hold until further notice.

But for many of us, our experience of this pandemic is considerably less bleak - and that can feel a bit awkward - as if we're not in step with those around us.

In this podcast episode I talk about:

• The two groups of people I see thriving at this time
• And why you shouldn't feel bad if you belong to one (or both) of those groups
• How to avoid sabotaging your own success when you feel uncomfortably happy (while others are struggling)

If you're experiencing growth in your consulting business, and you're keen to take it to the next level, download my free comprehensive guide - Six Elements Of A Seven Figure Business.

This week's episode is based on a lively debate I had on LinkedIn, started by a friend of mine, Christine Mortensen. Christine wrote "Recession-proof your business is BS" Do you agree?

Over the last few weeks 'Recession-proof your business' has become the new hyper-inflated promise touted by formula-flogging 'coaches'. It's the Covid-crisis equivalent of 'six-figures in 30-days' that has been pedalled over the last few years (can you tell I'm not a fan).

In this episode I explore:

• What you CAN do to protect (not proof) your business from an oncoming recession
• Why one-size-fits-all formulas usually fail
• The most overlooked cause of risk in any business
• And the huge risk we nearly overlooked when scaling at my employed position.

Risk is discussed as one of the pillars in my Six Elements Of A Seven-Figure Business report (my most popular ever free download).

And I explore it in much more depth in the Six Elements Of A Seven-Figure Business video series.

Also mentioned in the podcast:

• Episode 6 - Tackling the gender pay gap for women consultants
• Episode 8 - It's time to ask for me

The current crisis seems to have split small businesses, including consulting businesses, into three camps:

1. Everything's cancelled
2. Everything's carrying on as normal
3. Everything's ramped up and they've got more enquiries than they can handle

In this interview with Catherine Watkin (who coaches people on how to sell from the heart) we discussed how to handle selling to corporates at this time, including:

• How to keep selling without feeling like you're profiteering
• How to respond if an existing client is considering ending/pausing their contract
• The importance of taking the lead in sales conversations
• How you can connect with the value you bring, so you can have better sales conversations
• The simple, yet powerful offer you can make instead of postponing/cancelling live events and workshops.

And for more help from Catherine, you can access her free video training for authentic sales conversations.